Breaking: Whistleblowers expose alarming civil rights rollbacks in HUD: What you need to know" These audio extras are made possible thanks to our member supporters. Become a member today, go to https://Patreon.com/LauraFlandersandFriends Description: Housing discrimination is illegal in the U.S., but every year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) receives thousands of complaints from individuals who believe they are not being treated fairly because of their race, religion, disability and other protected classes. HUD is one of the only free resources available to Americans facing housing discrimination, but a shocking new whistleblower complaint letter released on Monday, September 29, 2025 says the agency is in crisis. Staff was slashed by 70% since Donald Trump took office, some civil rights cases have been abandoned, and political appointees are allegedly overriding legal findings to allow discrimination. These are just some of the claims in the formal complaint letter, which has now been filed through U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office and taken to the press. In this conversation, Laura Flanders speaks to two of the four whistleblowers, HUD civil rights fair housing attorneys, to find out what this story means for civil rights and why they’re speaking out now. As fair housing hangs in the balance, Palmer Heenan and Paul Osadebe are organizing union members to uphold their oath to defend the constitution and protect Americans. Guests: • Palmer Heenan: Attorney, HUD Whistleblower; Member, AFGE 476 • Paul Osadebe: Attorney, HUD Whistleblower; Steward, AFGE 476 Subscribe to Laura Flanders & Friends on YouTube and podcast platforms to receive bonus interviews like these and our full, uncut conversations. And stay tuned for a new LF&F report featuring segments from this interview, coming soon to public television and radio.
Synopsis: As concerns about rolled-back protections grow louder, whistleblowers at HUD have risked it all by going public with allegations that paint a stark picture of systematic regression on equality under the law.
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Description: Housing discrimination is illegal in the U.S., but every year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) receives thousands of complaints from individuals who believe they are not being treated fairly because of their race, religion, disability and other protected classes. HUD is one of the only free resources available to Americans facing housing discrimination, but a shocking new whistleblower complaint letter released on Monday, September 29, 2025 says the agency is in crisis. Staff was slashed by 70% since Donald Trump took office, some civil rights cases have been abandoned, and political appointees are allegedly overriding legal findings to allow discrimination. These are just some of the claims in the formal complaint letter, which has now been filed through U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office and taken to the press. In this conversation, Laura Flanders speaks to two of the four whistleblowers, HUD civil rights fair housing attorneys, to find out what this story means for civil rights and why they’re speaking out now. As fair housing hangs in the balance, Palmer Heenan and Paul Osadebe are organizing union members to uphold their oath to defend the constitution and protect Americans.
Guests:
• Palmer Heenan: Attorney, HUD Whistleblower; Member, AFGE 476
• Paul Osadebe: Attorney, HUD Whistleblower; Steward, AFGE 476
Full Conversation Release: While our weekly shows are edited to time for broadcast on Public TV and community radio, we offer to our members and podcast subscribers the full uncut conversation. These audio exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters.
Watch the special report on YouTube; PBS World Channel September 12th, and on over 300 public stations across the country (check your listings, or search here via zipcode). Listen: Episode airing on community radio September 15th (check here to see if your station is airing the show) & available as a podcast.
RESOURCES:
Related Episodes:
• Housing is a Human Right Watch / Listen
• Frances Golden, “Rabble Rousers” & the NYC Housing Struggle that Won. Watch / Listen / Full, Uncut Conversation
• Domestic Violence Survivor & Homeless Too? A CA Cohort Shows What Can Be Done. Watch/Listen / Full, Uncut Conversation
Related Articles and Resources:
• U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren announces receipt of official complaint from HUD whistleblowers, ‘If you buy a home or rent a home or want to…’ YouTube
•. Trump appointees roll back rollback enforcement of fair housing laws, by Debra Kamin, September 22, 2025, New York Times
• Federal Workers Are Organizing for Democracy- from the Inside Out, by Chris Does and Alissa Tafti, June 25, 2025, NP Quarterly
• Exclusive: Federal Whistleblowers Expose How Trump’s HUD is Abandoning Vulnerable Americans, by Maximillian Alvarez, September 22, 2025, The Real News Network
• Trump’s housing department rolls back work to combat residential segregation, whistleblowers allege, by Shcris Stein, September 24, 2025, The Guardian
Full Episode Notes are located HERE.
Support Laura Flanders and Friends by becoming a member at https://www.patreon.com/c/lauraflandersandfriends
Music Credit: "Dusk & Glimmer" by Blue Dot Sessions. Original sound design by Jeannie Hopper
CHAPTERS:
Exposing Alarming Civil Rights Rollbacks at HUD
00:00:00
Senator Warren Exposes HUD's Attack on Civil Rights
00:01:50
Why HUD Whistleblowers Risked Careers to Speak Out
00:04:51
How Political Interference Dismantles Fair Housing Enforcement
00:08:24
Protecting Survivors: The Violence Against Women Act Team
00:14:24
Collective Action: Building Worker Power Through FUN
00:16:49
Legal Strategy: Why a Formal Whistleblower Complaint
00:21:40
From Trump's Past to 'Valentine's Day Massacre' Layoffs
00:26:31
The Growing Movement of Organized Federal Workers
00:30:01
Demanding Oversight and Transparency for HUD Actions
00:34:34
Defending Unions: The Power of Collective Worker Solidarity
00:38:10
Why Rolling Back Protections Harms Everyone, Not Just Some
00:40:46
Federal Workers' Vision for a Fairer American Society
00:44:43
LAURA FLANDERS AND FRIENDS
UNCUT INTERVIEW:
123 In this exclusive, Laura Flanders speaks with two whistleblowers from inside HUD, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, who have risked their careers to expose alarming civil rights rollbacks.
HUD promotes National Housing policy and community development by ensuring access to affordable housing, enforcing fair housing laws to prevent discrimination, and supporting programs for home ownership and community revitalization.
Exclusives are made possible thanks to our member supporters.
It should not have come as a shock.
The administration's agenda to rollback civil rights was specifically outlined in Project 2025, that infamous 900 page road map written by conservative think tanks and former Trump administration officials.
Upon his inauguration, the president immediately began issuing executive orders, ending programs, halting investigations, and appointing anti civil rights loyalists to key positions in the government.
Democratic leaders, some of them, spoke out and roundly condemned budget cuts and layoffs.
But in the months since, the administration has largely gotten away with casting its actions as simply reining in cumbersome DEI regulations or cutting corporate red tape, to the point that it has taken courageous collective organizing by the very same workers who are the most under attack to sound the alarm about what is really going on.
Namely, this nation's progress on civil rights and equality under the law is being reversed, ended in front of our eyes with clear intent, and it's happening fast.
Most recently, 4 attorneys and staff workers at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or Hud's Office of General Counsel and Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity went public with an emergency complaint, which they have filed through US Senator Elizabeth Warren's office and taken to the press.
We're going to speak to two of those brave whistleblowers about what made their action necessary and and what went into it in just a moment.
But first, here's Senator Warren laying out clearly the nature of the crisis.
So I just received internal documents from whistleblowers inside the Trump administration.
And if you buy or rent A home or hoping to someday, you need to hear this.
So right now, if you're a mom protecting her kids from living with an abusive father, or if you're getting denied a mortgage because of the colour of your skin, you have civil rights protection under U.S. law.
But the Trump administration has been systematically destroying these federal protections for renters and homeowners.
And now, new internal documents shared with my office from whistleblowers inside the Department of Housing and Urban Development show the extent of the Trump administration's attack on civil rights and show how the administration appears to be ignoring the law.
These documents detail how the Trump administration apparently views the office that enforces civil right protections in housing as a quote optics problem.
Imagine thinking that defending black families from being denied a mortgage because they're black, or protecting a mom and her kids from living with an abusive father is a quote optics problem.
Imagine thinking that it's an optics problem to help the dad with a bad knee whose landlord refuses to install a handrail on the stairs.
The Trump administration is firing and reassigning as many people from the civil rights office as they possibly can.
And why?
To make it impossible for the few staff that remain to actually do their jobs and help people the way the law says, the consequences are enormous.
Already hundreds of housing discrimination cases have just been dropped or stalled.
And now people are asking, well, why would I file a case at all if nothing's going to happen?
What the Trump administration is doing is wrong.
I am calling for an independent investigation of the Department of Housing and Urban Development into the Trump administration's attack on civil rights.
An attack that has been exposed by the whistleblowers who were there.
We wrote these laws to make this a fairer America, and now it's time to enforce those laws.
With me now is Paul Ossadebe.
He's an attorney working in the federal government, a shop steward for the American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGY Local 476 in Washington, DC, and a member of the Federal Unionists Network, about which we will hear more in a moment.
We're also joined by Palmer Heenan, also an attorney working in the federal government and also a member of AFGY and FUN.
And these are just two of the four employees within the Department of Housing and Urban Development who have filed a formal whistleblower complaint through the office of Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts.
Palmer and Paul, welcome to Laura Flanders and friends.
Thank you, and I truly mean it.
Thank you so much for your work.
Before we begin, and we're going to hear about the nature of your complaint.
It's very dire.
I want to hear a little bit more about you.
Whistleblowers are always brave and courageous people, but there's usually more behind the scenes that we don't know about.
So are you just incredibly brave or what went into this decision to file this complaint?
Who wants to start, Paul?
Sure.
So first of all, thanks so much for having us on.
And no, it's not just bravery, though with the risk that we're facing.
It did take something like that.
It took collective action.
It took a commitment to civil rights to each other as better workers and Co workers.
It took a real commitment to our oath as federal workers.
When we took this job, we said that we were going to defend the Constitution and defend the American people against all enemies, born and domestic.
And we definitely think that in a moment like this, that requires collective action, having each other back, joining with everyone that we possibly could, and going public in a moment like this.
Because if we didn't do that, we knew that the people that we served would be harmed even more than we might be.
So yes, we're facing risks.
Yes, it was a hard decision to go public like this, but it was really the only choice that we had considering the situation you're facing.
Palma, to elaborate, you are still employed, correct?
As of the moment that we're speaking.
You've not been fired or resigned.
What went into your decision to join in this suit?
I, I, I think that, that Paula said it really well.
You know, I've, I've spent the, the vast majority of my legal career, I've dedicated it to helping people vindicate their civil rights.
And, and that means that we're recalled to something I think a little bit larger.
There's huge risk to Paul and I and making this decision.
But at the same time, the folks that we're trying to help, the folks that that we're trying to bring the cases forward for are the ones that are also at risk.
I mean, the people that we help on a day-to-day basis, they might be on the streets, they, they might literally be in danger for their lives because their cases aren't being moved forward by our office.
And so at the end of the day, you know, if I'm weighing my career versus the, the life of someone or a child living on the street, I, I didn't really see it as, as being a choice.
May out what are some of the key points in your whistleblower complaint?
Elizabeth Warren mentioned some, but which do you think are the most important to you, Paul?
Essentially, civil rights enforcement at HUD and throughout the federal government is being dismantled.
So if you are someone out there who's renting or trying to buy a home, if you're a veteran with a disability or survivor or someone who's being discriminated against based on your race or just for having a family or having kids, when you try to go to the government and get help, the only free the legal help that you can get that speaks with the voice of the federal government and the American people and the laws that Congress passed to make sure that people have fair access to housing, you're supposed to get help when that happens.
And the problem is, at every step of the way, we are being stopped from helping you.
So when you come to us with a complaint, that complaint might not even get investigated because of the staffing cuts or because political appointees say that we don't want to look into that type of case anymore.
That's DEI now we're just not going to do that.
And or if you urgently need help, it might be a relatively small amount of money.
We're supposed to help people settle their clay, their cases, and we are supposed to speak to both the person filing the complaint and the person who allegedly discriminated and, and explain what the risks are and, and how maybe it's just better if everyone, for everyone, if they just settle the case and we can get people the help that they need without going through the entire legal process, without spending a bunch of money.
We're being stopped from doing that because we can't talk to any of the parties.
And when we try to conciliate a case, that case could be that conciliation could be pulled back, or we might not even have the authority to speak to them in the first place to reach that complaint.
And who is making these decisions?
Palmer.
I, I, I think that the level of political interference we're seeing, so these are recently installed political leaders within HUD are the ones that are making these decisions and so.
They have long histories in housing law.
Are they attorneys like yourselves?
Some of them are and some of them aren't attorneys.
But the frank fact of the matter is, is that our office represents the most experienced group of Fair housing advocates practically across the country.
And in large part that's because our office was created during the Reagan administration to do this work.
During that time, the government decided that there needed to be essentially prosecutors to go after people who discriminate in in housing.
And as a consequence, they required HUD to investigate cases.
And that's our investigative arm, the Office of Fair Housing, an equal opportunity.
And they created our office, the Office of Fair Housing, as essentially the prosecutors.
We're the ones that are bringing the fair housing cases.
We are the ones that recruit some of the top fair housing advocates across the country, administration in and administration out.
There are many people in our office that have served in Republican and Democratic administrations, and that's because housing isn't political, or at least it shouldn't be.
But because of the decisions that are being made now, it's become a political issue and the downstream consequences of that are going to be catastrophic.
Is there any part of private law or is there any private institution that could substitute for for what you're doing?
Palmer.
Absolutely not.
And and there's a lot of reasons for that.
That's not to say that there's not a role for private attorneys.
There are many, many good private attorneys out there.
The problem is that there are too few to keep up with the enormous volume of cases that that are filed with our office.
Our investigative arm receives 10s of thousands of complaints every year from the public.
And we are, as Paul said, a free resource.
We've decided as a people in this country that if you've been discriminated against, you get to file a complaint with the government and the government will for free and in a neutral way investigate that complaint.
And if those neutral investigators determined that there's reasonable cause to believe that discrimination occurred, the case gets moved to our office and we prosecute that discrimination across the board, beginning to end, for free.
And there is not a private institution that does that work, and certainly not one that does it for free.
There are some state organizations and nonprofits that that supplement the work we do.
The problem is that this administration is also attacking those organizations.
They're withdrawing funding from local nonprofits who do fair housing work.
They're removing and revoking guidance that state, state and local governments and and even private entities have relied on for years to make sure that they're either doing enforcement correctly at that level or if you're a developer or a real estate agent, that you're able to follow and comply with the law because you want to follow and comply with the law.
So not only are we in a situation where enforcement is being curtailed at every level, including the gutting of our office, but they're making it harder for people that want to comply with the law to comply with the law.
You, as I understand it, Paul, work within the Violence Against Women Act team within hard, which, forgive me, I didn't even know existed and perhaps doesn't anymore.
What's the what's the work that you do?
What's the status of that team today and what are your concerns there?
So I was recently added to that team because so many people were fired or forced to resign that they needed to add new people urgently to do that crucial work.
And HUD just recently got the authority in 2022 to enforce the Violence Against Women Act and go after landlords that HUD itself is funding and making sure that they are not that discriminating against survivors, people who've been stalked, people who've been sexually assaulted.
We make sure that those people get access to housing, that they can move to a safe unit when someone abuses them or they're being stalked.
We make sure that people aren't excluding them from housing because they just don't want to deal with someone's history of abuse or their their current partner might be abusing them in the unit.
And often times the landlord just says, well, I just don't want to deal with you.
I'm going to evict you.
I'm going to put you and your family out on the street.
And we are the ones who stop them from doing that.
And what they've done with the reassignments, all the restrictions on our work, our ability to conciliate and get people urgent moves out of housing or to investigate cases, to prosecute those cases, it's so the people are left just completely unprotected.
So people are in life and death, dangerous situations.
People need a move tomorrow to save their lives.
We are supposed to be there to make sure that that happens, to hold landlords that we are funding, the American taxpayer is funding.
We're supposed to hold them accountable.
And instead of protecting women, as the executive orders say, they're destroying the team that protects women, my team that I'm on.
I hear you.
I hear your both of your passions for this work and your concern about those who are not going to be served or even helped in this in as a consequence of what you're facing.
I've got lots more questions about your experience inside the administration, but I want to get to the teamwork that you are a part of because we've heard a lot about people being laid off and often these federal workers are cast in our media as kind of I pull people isn't that terrible.
But you and the folks at FUN, which it's cute acronym for organization that is addressing a real crisis, the Federal Unionist Network aren't victims.
You are standing up and I want to hear more about what is making that possible because let's face it, we say courage is contagious, but it's not a virus it it needs to be implemented needs help.
So who wants to take that on Palmer?
I'll.
I'll defer to to to Paul on that.
He he's one of the original members of Fun.
Yeah.
So in this moment, like the thing that will actually get us through this is solidarity, is recognizing what potential power we have as federal workers in the workplace and building connections among each other, learning the skills to actually do that.
Even in an atmosphere of extreme fear right now, we have to be clear that is the method of the administration.
They want to create fear, which leads to silence, which lets things be dismantled without anyone standing up and fighting and saying this is illegal, this is wrong and this is harming people.
And it's up to federal workers, the ones in the building, to actually do that.
And that's what fun is about.
We make sure that people know that they're not alone, that there are people who are ready to fight and know how, and that it is our job and our role to not just kind of sit here and take it or just to be apolitical.
When political appointees won't let you do your job.
It's up to you to defend your agency and to come together with your Co workers who are all under attack and protect both yourselves, your agency and the people that we serve.
That's what fun is about.
We do that through strategizing, through training on how to actually build worker power in the workplace and how to use that power to connect with all the groups that care about what the federal government does and all the people who are served by the federal government.
When you make that coalition and actually use every ounce of power that you have, like what we are trying to do right now, you can make so much more noise and have so much more protection than when you do anything by yourself or when you allow the fear to kind of control what you do.
And so you just remain apathetic.
You, you stay silent.
That's exactly what the administration wants.
And we have to very much do the opposite.
So, Palmer, bringing you in here, there might be people going well, but how on earth under these circumstances can I do anything like that?
How did you do it?
And what's your message to people perhaps who are feeling very afraid and not quite sure where to turn?
Yeah, it's a really important question.
And I think, you know, one of the things that is a sort of a natural outcropping of our work in civil rights is realizing the value of community.
And that's particularly true when you're doing specifically fair housing work because our whole work is dedicated towards making sure that people are able to live where it is that they want to live and live there safely, stably and securely.
To make sure that, you know, there's not a child on the streets that was told, you know, whose parents were told, sorry, you can't live here because we don't want kids to live here.
That's a protected class under the Fair Housing Act.
So I think, you know, building that community and creating that community is, is a real natural part of what it is that that we already work hard to do.
And I should say it's not a coincidence that the two of you are union members as well.
The the Unionist Network is not a union, but you are members of AFG, which is.
That's exactly right.
You know, it was the fact that we are a unionized office, right?
That we were able to work collectively already before all of this and able to extend sort of our natural feeling towards community, along with our union membership, to come together and say, look, at the end of the day, whatever risk there is to us is outweighed by the risk to the people that we serve.
And part of our duty and part of our oath as federal workers is to take action.
And if that means going public and losing our livelihoods, that's what we have to do.
Why a whistleblower complaint?
Why not just a demonstration?
Why not just marching out?
Why not mass resignation?
I don't know, Palm.
I'm sorry, Paul.
I mean, part of it is because we're lawyers and we wanted to to make sure that what we were saying was accurate and protected.
So we wanted to put it in writing and make it something that had support behind it in terms of facts documents, to make it much harder to just lie about it.
Essentially, that was one element.
We wanted to make sure that anything that we did was going to be shared with people who were supposed to be holding our, our agency accountable.
So that's members of Congress and that's the Inspector General.
So it made sense to to do it that way.
And it's something that can be shared and replicated throughout the government.
It's where we're at our most protected, and it's where so many people can participate because we all see the illegal things that are happening, we all see the attacks, we all see the attempts to dismantle the government, and that's something that is illegal.
And when something's illegal, it is our responsibility to say something about it and.
It is.
It's also true that in a legal complaint like this one, you're being very clear about what is happening.
And the language is impossible to misunderstand.
So I want to go back to the top.
Do you think I'm overstating what is happening in this country right now?
And what do you think is holding people back from really naming the obviously nameable?
Because you just named it threat that we are under as a country that at least ostensibly aspires to being a multicultural, multiracial, equal opportunity Republic.
Palmer.
That's a hard question.
I can't tell you what's in people's hearts, but here's what I can tell you.
There's a lot of fear out there, and I understand why because the actions and things that you're seeing are scary.
But we are more powerful together.
And when we realize that when any one of us is affected, all of us are affected.
And that's the very nature of the work that we do in the federal government, usually very quietly.
You don't hear a lot from federal workers when things are going well, and that's because we don't really usually want to be heard from.
We just want to be left to do our jobs helping the American people.
In our cases, that means helping people, you know, investigate and prosecute cases of when they've been discriminated against.
There are federal workers across the government who do that exact work, that exact same kind of work to helping your everyday American.
Whether it's making sure that you've got an accurate weather forecast, right.
Whether it's making sure that that new drug that you or your child might need is getting approved as quickly as it can get approved.
Whether it's fighting to to make sure that, you know, a coal power plant can't get put into your backyard because that's what the coal company decided that they want to do.
Those are the things that federal workers do on a day-to-day basis, opening the national parks.
And so I think there has to be a realization that all of these actions are affecting all of us.
And in the long term and even the the short and medium term, they're going to have negative consequences in our work.
I know for a fact that people have already been become unhoused because of things happening in HUD.
And those stories are the same across the government.
Schools that aren't able to, you know, have the funding or get the things that they need, right.
You know, workers who aren't being protected, whatever the case might, you know, energy prices that are going to go up, whatever the case might be, all of us are impacted by this and it's going to take all of us to get out from underneath it.
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Thank you.
I can't help but be reminded that Donald Trump and his family in the 1970s, before the establishment of your office, were brought up on charges of discrimination against Black and Puerto Rican Latino residents in their housing developments.
Is it crazy to think the guy just holds a grudge, Paul?
I mean, they've been pretty consistent from the first administration till now that they're not super happy with housing enforcement.
They're much more, it seems like they're much more concerned with the opinions of developers, landlords, people who want to discriminate than they are with the ordinary Americans that face discrimination everyday.
The thousands of people that make complaints and the far more than that that never make a complaint.
There's, there's so many people who are affected by discrimination.
I don't know why they do what they do.
It doesn't seem to help people and they they never really seem to address the impacts that it has on people.
In fact, when they get confirmed, like Secretary Scott Turner, he went before Congress and said Underoath that I will vigorously defend fair housing, I will make sure that everyone, that HUD as an agency is protecting the American people.
And that is not true.
That's not what's happened right now.
Have you been surprised by anything that you've seen?
I mean, as I said at the top, there was plenty of indication this was going to be part of the agenda of this administration.
But when they came in, was there a day where you realized, oh, this is more than I thought, or, or did you, did you just go as you expected?
I can say for me, it was February 14th, this Valentine's Day massacre, as better workers call it, when they just callously fired probationary employees throughout the government claiming that it was due to performance or or other made-up reasons and that was damaging the careers of these workers.
But even more than that, you are cutting people who want to help people.
They came here to make sure that you, the American people, a person watching this, have the roof over your head that you want and that you are not stopped from getting that by your race or for having kids or a disability.
It doesn't make sense to to punish someone for trying to do work like that.
And saying that it's due to efficiency or due to DEI, it has nothing to do with any of that.
It's just pointless cruelty.
And it hurt you as much as it hurt the people who were fired that day.
Palmer coming to you.
I remember when that February 14th those layoffs started happening and I started hearing from people who were not political, were not long act, long time activists were as you are, public servants, very committed, super smart, incredible expertise, dedicated to service.
And I wondered, and I wasn't alone in thinking, well, is there a rising tide going to be comprising these people, pulling these people up in involving them in a way that could make a difference?
Because this is a whole lot of folks who perhaps haven't been organized, might not be union members all across the country, could be a pretty potent force.
Does fun allow or tell me a little bit about who's in fun and can you be employed, Not employed, Who's in it?
Sure.
I before I do, let me just say something about the Valentine's Day massacre because on that day, no one really knew what was happening as as far as our supervisors knew.
It was a total surprise.
And I was actually at the doctor that day and got a call from my supervisor asking, are you still employed?
It was that kind of circumstance.
Even if you think that there should be cuts to government or the government should be made more efficient, there's no way that that's the way to do it.
It just doesn't make sense.
Putting aside the fact that we lost an enormous amount of expertise across the government and, and, and, and so yes, it is really important that folks are aware of organizations like FUN, where, where people, federal workers, former federal workers or friends of federal workers can come together and, and, and organize and, and help the American people understand what it is they're losing and the actions that, that we need people to take to make sure that it's not gone forever.
Would you describe yourself as a far left radical?
Absolutely not.
I would not describe myself as a far left radical.
I would describe myself as someone who has spent their legal career trying to help people, regardless of their politics, get help when they've been discriminated against.
And that means if you've been discriminated based on any of the protected classes under the Fair Housing Act, that means if you've been discriminated against because of your religion, your race, your color, your sex, your national origin, because of disability status, there are so many protected categories in the Fair Housing Act.
Every American is protected by the Fair Housing Act.
And so in my work, politics don't matter.
What matters is somebody comes to me, I investigate their case and if there's reasonable cause to believe discrimination occurred, I go after the one that hurt him because in this country we don't allow that, or at least we didn't allow.
That yeah, Paul, coming to you.
I heard from your colleague there that you were one of the founding members of Fund.
How has the organization grown?
Would you say there is a rising tide of previously unorganized people moving into action creating infrastructure?
So I was an early member, not sure if I quite classified myself as a founder, maybe in the group right after that, but it existed before this administration.
We saw the need to get federal workers more organized, to create more unions and to strengthen the ones that already existed.
And we knew we would have to be ready for the possibility of an administration that didn't value federal workers and the protections that we provide or that was anti worker and anti union.
And we knew we would need to be ready to organize in that moment.
Now that moment has come.
And that's why Fund has really exploded over the last several months.
And we are trying to organize people who are currently under attack, who are still employed, the people who have already been fired or who were chased out of their job through the the deferred resignation program, anyone who values federal work and protecting the American people.
We are trying to get those people more organized, more trained, and more ready to use every tool at their disposal and to recognize their power because we all do have power.
The administration tries to make people feel powerless, but we are powerful when we work together, when we strategize and try to understand what our power potentially could be and what the power of the people attacking us is so that we can address that.
And that's what fun is about.
I believe that we will see more and more people doing things like what we have just done or whatever makes sense to them where they are, because workers are the ones who know best about how to protect their agency and serve the public.
And as long as we are thinking along those lines and understand that it's our position, our position to do that, and our oath demands us to do that in this moment, I think we're going to see a lot more action and fight from federal workers and from our allies.
I can feel my spine getting stiffer as I hear you too, coming to you, Palmer, you talked about actions earlier.
What actions do you want the Congress and Senator Warren to do?
What what?
What do you hope will come of a of an Inspector General investigation?
What do you want to happen?
That's a great question.
I let me take it kind of piece by piece.
I think we need oversight from Congress and, and Senator Warren has been a leader in that space, but obviously she can't do it alone, right?
You know, we need folks on both sides of the aisle to realize that housing is important.
Every person, every member of Congress has someone in their district who our office has helped.
And that's because Congress created us to do that work for the members of all their districts.
And so we need every member of Congress to stand up and say we're not going to allow this, right?
We can't allow for it to be more difficult for people to find.
Housing costs are already through the roof, and housing is so expensive.
We can't let it get more expensive.
We can't make it harder for a family to find housing.
We can't make it harder for a disabled veteran to find a place that his wheelchair can literally get in the door.
So we need oversight to make sure that we're doing the work that Congress required us by statute to do.
And to get there, I think we're going to need people to contact their members of Congress.
We need people to reach out and say, look, this is how, you know, I was discriminated against or this is how this is what happened to my neighbor.
We've, we've got to make it so that these stories are getting through to members of Congress.
Right now, Congress is on recess.
That means that a person can walk down or, or drive down or bike down or take the bus down to, to their Congress members office and, and, and tell them stand up for these rights.
Make sure that my rights are protected.
Your rights are protected so that if we ever need this service, it's there for us because you put it in place for us.
So that's what I really think needs to happen now, you know, we need, we all need to stand up together.
We need to contact Congress and we need Congress to come in and, and, and provide that oversight function that that they're, you know, they're able to provide as far as the inspector general's report.
I hope that it gives transparency into the inner workings of HUD and how these cuts, these reassignments, this dismantlement has impacted the work that we do on a day-to-day basis.
The Inspector General already found that our office was understaffed, and that meant case processing times were through the roof.
These cuts to both our office and the investigative part of HUD, the Office of Fair Housing Equal Opportunity, are going to make those wait times even longer.
Putting aside the hundreds of cases that are going to be withdrawn, that have already been withdrawn, stalled out, or cases where settlements have been revoked or reduced or what have you.
So I think we need transparency from an investigation so that the American people can see the full scope of what it is that's been done at HUD.
It's only then that we're really going to be able to start to fix.
It Paul, you are two of the whistleblowers.
What can you tell us about the other two?
I can tell you that they're just as committed to fair housing and civil rights as we are.
It was a hard decision whether to sign on to the complaint at all or to go public.
And I knew that it made sense for me to do it because of my the way that I look at things and my situation in life.
It didn't make sense for everyone to go public, but it was really important for some of us to do it, to cut through the atmosphere of fear and to show people that when you speak out, people will support you.
You're not going to be alone.
There are people who are ready in fun, in your union, throughout the federal government, in Congress, in the community to support you.
And that's what we were thinking when we decided to to go public.
And fun, you just mentioned your union AFG, federal government employees union work together in certain ways, but they're different in certain ways.
We haven't talked about the attacks that the union itself is under in this moment.
Do you want to add anything on that front?
Paul yes, absolutely.
The big reason why our unions all across the federal government are under attack is to stop what we're doing right now.
They don't want us to have a collective voice to be able to speak out and to tell the truth about what's happening.
They want us all to be in fear as individuals for there to be no solidarity, for everyone to be informing on each other, or just to be silent.
And the opposite of silence and being alone is solidarity.
And that's what a union is about.
That's exactly why they can't allow it to stand.
Because if we are out there speaking out and telling the truth and organizing within the workplace and outside of the workplace with the people that depend on our services and protections, then they know they can't get away with what they're doing.
They can't lie about the fact that they're breaking the law.
They can't hide.
The damage that they're doing to the American people.
And so they have to shut down the main institution and organization of workers that can actually reveal what's happening.
But we're not going to go away.
AFGE is not going anywhere.
Fun is not going anywhere.
We are going to be here to continue telling the truth because that's what we signed up to do when we took these jobs.
I hesitate to take us back to this question, Palmer, but I want to lay out a nightmare scenario, maybe not a nightmare scenario, but it is all very.
You talked about the housing crisis that we are facing as a nation, the housing crunch, the high cost, the ABS, the lack of affordable housing that the housing that we need that is unavailable to so many.
If you hear Donald Trump in the next months or year as running up to most sensible midterms, perhaps say we have done away with the restrictions for landlords so that they can now more easily rent housing.
And if you're in a segregated white community, it doesn't matter.
He might not say that out loud, but he might.
Why should white people care?
And will that work to his constituency to say, look, we made it easier for you to get housing?
I can't say whether it would work to a particular constituency.
I will tell you that it won't work in reality.
And we know that both because of history and because of the current work.
We've seen what happens when you try to segregate.
It actually doesn't help anyone.
It drives home costs down.
I mean, we saw that actually with the Hulk and redlining, which gave rise eventually to the Fair Housing Act.
But we also see that through our current work, you know, how does brought cases against lenders who engaged in price discrimination where they decided, look, this area has too many people who are Hispanic, too many people who are black.
So we're going to charge the people in that area more, but that affects everybody who wants to live in that area, whether they're black or white or whether they're Hispanic or not Hispanic, whatever the case might be.
And what that means is that it costs all of us more.
And if you let that that behavior, that discrimination go rampant, then why wouldn't they just raise the price across the board?
They'd be able to against in this particular area.
So why not just everywhere?
That's why that won't work, right?
You know, if you've got a landlord or a developer who wants to build housing and and they don't want to build it in an accessible way, that's another thing that our office make sure make sure is going to happen that housing is accessible.
We can't have it so that a disabled veteran who was injured serving our country, you know, abroad isn't able to get into that housing.
That's not going to make housing cheaper for really anyone, but particularly that individual.
So if we want housing that is available across the board, if we want to tap down on mortgage cost, rental cost, the solution is to make that housing more available to increase the market for that housing so that landlords aren't able essentially to do or developers aren't able to essentially do or banks, whatever it is they want.
That's what our office does on a day-to-day basis.
We put money back in people's pocketbooks.
We make sure that somebody with a disability is able to physically get in the door of properties, that families with children aren't banned just and have to pay more for housing, you know, pay more for worse housing elsewhere just because they had kids.
So, you know, if if that's what ends up happening, that may appeal to some people.
But at the end of the day, it's not going to help anybody in actuality or in the sort of more abstract sense that when one of us is harmed, all of us is harmed with respect to our civil rights.
Well, as somebody who grew up, whose father was in a wheelchair and I'm very glad we could get into a house and had somewhere to live and wasn't discriminate against, I hear you important point.
I want to end by asking the two of you the question that we close all of our episodes with.
And that is what you think is the story the future will tell of this moment if you look forward, I don't know, pick your, pick your date, whether it's 10/20/25 years.
What do you think is the story the future will tell of us now?
Palmer.
It's a great question.
Let me tell you the story that I hope the future will tell because I think that's important in this moment that we are able to look forward and, and see a path.
Because I hope that the story the future will tell is the story of people coming together and, and, and realizing that we can make our society better by making it more equal.
No one is asking for a leg up or an extra hand or whatever the case might be.
We're just asking to get rid of discrimination.
And so I hope the future will tell the story of people doing just that, coming together, going to Congress and saying these are our rights.
You passed them into law decades ago.
Fight for the rights that we have now.
That's the story that I hope the future will tell of this moment.
What about you, Paul?
I believe that we will see that starting with this moment and the fights that have already started to happen all throughout the federal government, that in this moment it was federal workers who stood up, who told the truth, who organized in the workplaces and connected with every group that benefits from government services, that needs government services.
They worked with the faith community, with businesses, with nonprofits, everyone that they possibly could.
And they talked about the importance of federal work and they redefined what it means to be a federal worker.
They redefined what it means to commit to your oath and what that means in practice, what that calls you to do in moments of crisis.
And I believe that we're going to see that through fun, through our unions, through just individual workers, offices and people all across the government, that we came together to defend a fair society to and create a society that actually works for, cares about, protects and values everyone in this country, no matter what.
I believe that we have the power to create that and we will create that.
But it takes, and it takes solidarity.
I believe that we will say thank you so much.
I appreciate both of you and those that you're working with who are not with us on this show for all the work that you are doing and the inspiration, truly that you are providing to the nation.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks for joining us for this full uncut conversation.
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